overprocessed?

[johnnygals]

[doctorjames]

I will keep this one brief, mostly because my own views on colour balance and reaslism are not held by all.

Your shot has a feel of being a little fake. What I mean by that is that if I had seen your shot before you posed the question, I would still have felt it lacked a feeling of being genuine. I think the thing that does this for me is the aqua-marine colour to the water. Its not mimicked by the sky (thank goodness) but this does make the shot feel unnatural to me.

Unfortunately I cannot see the shot in higher resolution on your flickr site for a more throrough analysis.

Perhaps I am wrong, and the colour is real. I wonder if you would consider posting the original off camera shot so that we can compare?... I always find it useful when comparing my edits.

[johnnygals]

original shot without postprocessing...
P.S. feel free to alter the original image as long as you share your technique...
Thanks

[doctorjames]

Thanks.

I havent done anything with the original as the resolution is too low with what you have posted to flickr.

If I was going to have a go, I would probably increase the exposure a little and straighten the shot up, add a little selective sharpening and leave it at that... Oh and maybe crop off the bottom 15th of the shot.

Let me know if you want me to show you my suggestions, but will need a higher res starting image.

[doctorjames]

Oh, and I forgot to say, the original isnt bad at all for a straight off the camera image. Apart from straightening it would be acceptable as is Well done

[Maggie_M]

Yes,I think your edit of this photo is way over processed,it just doesnt look real.
I did a fast edit on your original,which I think is a pretty good shot.
I cropped out some of the bottom concrete thingy and then cloned out the rest (it was a fast and dirty clone job,if you decided to do that yourself be way more careful then I was.) Then I bumped up the contrast just a tad, increased the saturation but masked out the river, all in photoshop.
I hope this helps!

[johnnygals]

Thank you both for the comments and tips. I am new to photoshop and I appreciate your critique.

[doctorjames]

Have you thought about using Lightroom instead?... I generally stay clear of photoshop unless I have to, and prefer to get things right at the time of shooting. This of course is the holy grail, and often not achievable.

Lightroom is easy to use, very straightforward and something which I think is very important ---- its non destructive. This basically means that it will keep your original image and then list the changes have made without actually changing anything to the original image. When you are done and want to export or print the shot, it then applies all of your changes, therefore avoiding the loss in quality or repeated saves.

I use it for catalog managment and gentle post processing and it does me well, may be worth giving it a go (I think there is a free trial available)

[johnnygals]

Originally Posted by doctorjames

Have you thought about using Lightroom instead?... I generally stay clear of photoshop unless I have to, and prefer to get things right at the time of shooting. This of course is the holy grail, and often not achievable.

Lightroom is easy to use, very straightforward and something which I think is very important ---- its non destructive. This basically means that it will keep your original image and then list the changes have made without actually changing anything to the original image. When you are done and want to export or print the shot, it then applies all of your changes, therefore avoiding the loss in quality or repeated saves.

I use it for catalog managment and gentle post processing and it does me well, may be worth giving it a go (I think there is a free trial available)

Thanks for the tip, but I already have the full version of CS4 that a friend gave to me as a gift. I, too, try to get it right at the time of shooting, that is precisely why I don't have too much experience with postprocessing. Since I got CS4, I've been trying to experiment. Thanks again for the helpful advice.